Bill Text: NY A00764 | 2011-2012 | General Assembly | Introduced
Bill Title: Relates to the power of certain school boards of education to provide or enter into contract for the provision of health care services for the school community; requires the school district to receive a subsidy or reimbursement in the same manner that a county would receive for providing those health care services.
Spectrum: Partisan Bill (Democrat 4-0)
Status: (Introduced - Dead) 2012-06-06 - reported referred to ways and means [A00764 Detail]
Download: New_York-2011-A00764-Introduced.html
S T A T E O F N E W Y O R K
________________________________________________________________________
764
2011-2012 Regular Sessions
I N A S S E M B L Y
(PREFILED)
January 5, 2011
___________
Introduced by M. of A. GANTT, HOYT -- Multi-Sponsored by -- M. of A.
MORELLE, PEOPLES-STOKES -- read once and referred to the Committee on
Education
AN ACT to amend the education law and the public health law, in relation
to the powers of the boards of education for the city school districts
of Rochester and Buffalo to arrange and provide integrated health
services to the school community directly and/or through contractors
THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK, REPRESENTED IN SENATE AND ASSEM-
BLY, DO ENACT AS FOLLOWS:
1 Section 1. Legislative intent. The legislature finds:
2 1. Two trends, one sociological and one political, underpin a need for
3 the fiscally dependent school districts of the cities of Rochester and
4 Buffalo to obtain express authority to develop and operate programs for
5 integrated health services within the districts, in a manner which
6 embraces the best and most economic available technologies, and which
7 harnesses the health care resources of their respective communities in
8 the most effective possible manner. It is found, further, that the
9 public interest is served by permitting those districts to provide such
10 services directly, and/or by the use of contractors, including the
11 boards of cooperative educational services, which shall be expressly
12 authorized to contract to provide some or all of such services; and that
13 the costs of assuming such services be ameliorated by authorizing subsi-
14 dy and/or reimbursement for such services on the same basis and in the
15 same manner as a county health department would be eligible for such
16 subsidy or reimbursement for similar school health services.
17 2. During the first two decades of the twentieth century, exercising
18 police powers, city health departments in the cities of New York,
19 Rochester and Buffalo as an element of municipal health and sanitation
20 efforts began providing health services within city schools. Starting
21 with vaccinations and milk stations to provide pasteurized milk, the
EXPLANATION--Matter in ITALICS (underscored) is new; matter in brackets
[ ] is old law to be omitted.
LBD03205-01-1
A. 764 2
1 programs evolved into providing school physicians and nurses and medical
2 inspections. When "medical inspection" was codified under State law in
3 1913, in what is now section nine hundred one of the education law, the
4 city school districts in the cities of New York, Rochester and Buffalo,
5 in which the city health departments were actively engaged in school
6 health services, were excepted from the legislation. The term "medical
7 inspection" in that statute has been replaced with the term "school
8 health services," under chapter 477 of the laws of 2004. Over time, the
9 school health function for the city school districts of Rochester and
10 Buffalo devolved from city health departments to the county health
11 departments in the counties of Monroe and Erie, by resolution and char-
12 ter, as authorized by section one thousand seventeen-a of the optional
13 county government law. The county of Monroe and the county of Erie ther-
14 eupon provided and funded school health services for decades. The coun-
15 ties have determined that even with available reimbursement, they are no
16 longer able to provide school health services to the city school
17 districts. The county of Monroe eliminated staffing and funding in its
18 2004 budget; and the county of Erie has eliminated staffing and funding
19 in its 2005 budget. In December 2004, the Appellate Division, Fourth
20 Department of the New York State Supreme Court affirmed that the county
21 of Monroe had the authority to withdraw from providing and funding
22 school health services to the city school district of Rochester.
23 3. Within the cities of Rochester and Buffalo, there exists a marked
24 concentration of poverty, of racial concentration or isolation, and of
25 limited English language capacity, which together increase the risk that
26 school age children do not have access to any regular or adequate health
27 services outside of school; and that unless the school districts have
28 the authority to provide such services directly or through contractors,
29 and to develop an integrated health services network with available
30 community resources, the legislature finds that many children within
31 those cities are likely to continue to have insufficient access to
32 health care, with the inexorable result that their educational develop-
33 ment will also be impaired, to the long term detriment of those children
34 and to the state itself. Census data and other studies in Rochester, for
35 example, demonstrate that the city school district of Rochester has the
36 second highest per capita poverty rate among all school districts in the
37 state of New York; and ranks twelfth in child poverty in the United
38 States. In the 2001-2002 school year, eleven per cent of incoming
39 kindergarteners in Rochester had health problems requiring ongoing
40 medical supervision, while seven per cent of parents reported that their
41 child starting kindergarten had no primacy care physician, and twenty
42 per cent had never seen a dentist. Fifteen per cent of those parents
43 reported that their child had been hospitalized in a neonatal intensive
44 care unit at birth.
45 4. Particularly since the city school districts of Rochester and
46 Buffalo are fiscally dependent, the legislature finds that it is in the
47 public interest to provide that whenever integrated health services
48 would be subject to reimbursement or subsidy if provided by a county
49 health department then when such services are provided by a city school
50 district (or by its contractors) which had received school health
51 services from the county of Monroe or the county of Erie in the past,
52 that such city school district shall be deemed to be eligible for such
53 reimbursement or subsidy as if it were a county health department. In
54 that manner, the economic impact of termination of county school health
55 services will be limited to the local costs, and the districts will
56 continue to benefit from state reimbursement to the same degree as when
A. 764 3
1 school health services were provided by the county health departments.
2 It is the intent of the legislature that school district eligibility for
3 such reimbursement shall be retroactive to the first day of the school
4 fiscal year in which the county government which had previously provided
5 funding and staffing for school health services eliminated that aid from
6 its budget. In the case of the city school district of Rochester, such
7 eligibility shall be retroactive to July 1, 2004. The legislature
8 further finds that it is in the public interest to permit the city
9 school districts in the cities of Rochester and Buffalo to contract and
10 pay for some part or all of its integrated health services programs with
11 boards of cooperative educational services serving the counties of
12 Monroe and Erie, and for such boards of cooperative educational services
13 to provide such health services. This act shall be known as the Inte-
14 grated Health Services for Fiscally Dependent School Districts Act.
15 S 2. Section 901 of the education law is amended by adding a new
16 subdivision 3 to read as follows:
17 3. IN THE SCHOOL DISTRICTS EXCEPTED FROM THIS ARTICLE, WHERE SCHOOL
18 HEALTH SERVICES ARE NOT BEING FUNDED OR STAFFED BY THE HEALTH DEPART-
19 MENTS OF THE CITY OR COUNTY IN WHICH SUCH DISTRICT IS LOCATED; OR IF, IN
20 THE DISCRETION OF THE BOARD OF EDUCATION, ADDITIONAL INTEGRATED HEALTH
21 SERVICES ARE WARRANTED, THEN THE BOARD OF EDUCATION OF SUCH SCHOOL
22 DISTRICT SHALL BE AUTHORIZED, BUT NOT REQUIRED TO PROVIDE, DIRECTLY OR
23 BY ONE OR MORE CONTRACTS SUCH SCHOOL HEALTH SERVICES AS THE BOARD OF
24 EDUCATION DETERMINES ARE USEFUL OR NECESSARY TO MEET THE CURRENT AND
25 EVOLVING HEALTH NEEDS OF THEIR SCHOOL POPULATIONS, INCLUDING
26 SCHOOL-BASED AND INTEGRATED SCHOOL-LINKED HEALTH SERVICES WHICH MAY BE
27 LINKED TO COMMUNITY-BASED HEALTH CARE SYSTEMS, AND SERVICES WHICH EMPLOY
28 TELEMEDICINE OR OTHER EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES. WHERE AN EXCEPTED SCHOOL
29 DISTRICT PROVIDES SCHOOL HEALTH SERVICES WHICH WOULD BE SUBJECT TO
30 REIMBURSEMENT OR SUBSIDY IF PROVIDED BY A COUNTY HEALTH DEPARTMENT, THEN
31 NOTWITHSTANDING ANY PROVISION OF ANY OTHER STATE LAW, THE CITY SCHOOL
32 DISTRICT SHALL BE ELIGIBLE FOR SUCH SUBSIDY OR REIMBURSEMENT AS WOULD A
33 COUNTY HEALTH DEPARTMENT. THIS ELIGIBILITY SHALL APPLY NOT ONLY TO
34 SERVICES PROVIDED BY SUCH CITY SCHOOL DISTRICT DIRECTLY, BUT ALSO TO
35 SERVICES PROVIDED INDIRECTLY, THROUGH CONTRACTS WITH A BOARD OF COOPER-
36 ATIVE EDUCATIONAL SERVICES, OR THROUGH ANY OTHER QUALIFIED PROVIDER OF
37 HEALTH CARE SERVICES. SUCH ELIGIBILITY SHALL BE DEEMED TO APPLY TO
38 DIRECT OR CONTRACT SERVICES PERFORMED BY OR FOR THE CITY SCHOOL DISTRICT
39 ON OR AFTER THE FIRST DAY OF THE FIRST FISCAL YEAR IN WHICH THE COUNTY
40 IN WHICH SUCH CITY SCHOOL DISTRICT IS LOCATED DID NOT PROVIDE FUNDING OR
41 STAFFING FOR SCHOOL HEALTH SERVICES.
42 S 3. Section 2554 of the education law is amended by adding two new
43 subdivisions 28 and 29 to read as follows:
44 28. TO PROVIDE, IN DISTRICTS EXCEPTED FROM THE PROVISIONS OF SUBDIVI-
45 SION ONE OF SECTION NINE HUNDRED ONE OF THIS CHAPTER, SUCH SCHOOL-BASED
46 OR SCHOOL-LINKED INTEGRATED SCHOOL HEALTH SERVICES AS THE BOARD OF
47 EDUCATION MAY, IN ITS DISCRETION DEEM WARRANTED, EITHER DIRECTLY, OR BY
48 ONE OR MORE CONTRACTS WITH A BOARD OF COOPERATIVE EDUCATIONAL SERVICES
49 AND/OR WITH HEALTH CARE PROVIDERS SERVING THE COMMUNITY IN WHICH THE
50 DISTRICT IS SITUATED. BOARDS OF EDUCATION ARE AUTHORIZED AND ENCOURAGED
51 TO DEVELOP MODELS FOR HEALTH CARE DELIVERY WHICH ARE TAILORED TO MEET
52 THE SPECIFIC NEEDS OF THEIR POPULATIONS IN A MANNER WHICH IS AS ECONOM-
53 ICAL AS POSSIBLE, BUT WHICH EMBODIES EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES AND ALSO
54 UTILIZES NEW AND ADVANCED MODELS FOR HEALTH SERVICES, AS WELL AS TRADI-
55 TIONAL SCHOOL HEALTH MODELS, AND TO ADD, AMEND, SUPPLEMENT, OR ELIMINATE
56 SPECIFIC HEALTH CARE SERVICES BASED UPON EFFECTIVENESS, COST, EVOLVING
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1 NEEDS, OR THE AVAILABILITY OF NEW APPROACHES TO SCHOOL HEALTH SERVICES.
2 SERVICES MAY BE SCHOOL-BASED OR MAY BE LINKED IN COLLABORATION WITH
3 LOCAL HOSPITALS, CLINICS, AND HEALTH CARE PROFESSIONALS AND AGENCIES AND
4 MAY ALSO HAVE CHARACTERISTICS OF BOTH SCHOOL-BASED AND SCHOOL-LINKED
5 MODELS, SUCH AS TELEMEDICINE COMPONENTS AND USE OF MOBILE MEDICAL
6 SERVICE UNITS.
7 29. TO SEEK AND APPLY FOR AND RECEIVE, IN DISTRICTS EXCEPTED FROM THE
8 PROVISIONS OF SUBDIVISION ONE OF SECTION NINE HUNDRED ONE OF THIS CHAP-
9 TER, STATE AID FUNDING WHICH IS OR MAY BECOME AVAILABLE TO MUNICI-
10 PALITIES UNDER ARTICLE SIX OF THE PUBLIC HEALTH LAW FOR THE SCHOOL-BASED
11 OR SCHOOL-LINKED INTEGRATED SCHOOL HEALTH SERVICES PROVIDED BY SUCH
12 DISTRICTS, AS DETAILED UNDER SUBDIVISION TWENTY-EIGHT OF THIS SECTION.
13 ANY APPLICATION FOR SUCH STATE AID FUNDING UNDER ARTICLE SIX OF THE
14 PUBLIC HEALTH LAW WOULD BE SUBMITTED IN ACCORDANCE WITH SUCH PROCEDURES
15 AS MAY BE PROMULGATED BY THE COMMISSIONER.
16 S 4. Section 2566 of the education law is amended by adding a new
17 subdivision 10 to read as follows:
18 10. TO HAVE SUPERVISION AND DIRECTION OF INTEGRATED SCHOOL HEALTH
19 SERVICES AUTHORIZED BY THE BOARD OF EDUCATION UNDER SUBDIVISION TWENTY-
20 EIGHT OF SECTION TWENTY-FIVE HUNDRED FIFTY-FOUR OF THIS CHAPTER.
21 S 5. Subdivision 4 of section 1950 of the education law is amended by
22 adding a new paragraph oo to read as follows:
23 OO. TO ENTER INTO CONTRACTS WITH CITY SCHOOL DISTRICTS PROVIDING INTE-
24 GRATED SCHOOL HEALTH SERVICES UNDER SUBDIVISION THREE OF SECTION NINE
25 HUNDRED ONE OF THIS CHAPTER, AND WHICH ARE LOCATED WITHIN OR ADJACENT TO
26 THE SUPERVISORY DISTRICT OF A BOARD OF COOPERATIVE EDUCATIONAL SERVICES
27 AND/OR THE TERRITORY SERVED BY A BOARD OF COOPERATIVE EDUCATIONAL
28 SERVICES, TO PROVIDE ALL OR PART OF THE SERVICES REQUESTED BY THE CITY
29 SCHOOL DISTRICT UPON MUTUALLY AGREEABLE TERMS. BOARDS OF COOPERATIVE
30 EDUCATIONAL SERVICES ARE HEREBY AUTHORIZED AND EMPOWERED TO DO AND
31 PERFORM ANY AND ALL ACTS NECESSARY OR DESIRABLE IN RELATION TO THE
32 PERFORMANCE OF ANY SUCH CONTRACTS.
33 S 6. Section 600 of the public health law, as added by chapter 901 of
34 the laws of 1986, is amended to read as follows:
35 S 600. State aid; general requirements. 1. In order to be eligible for
36 state aid under this title, a municipality shall be required to do the
37 following in accordance with the provisions of this article:
38 [1.] A. submit an application to the department for state aid;
39 [2.] B. submit a municipal public health services plan to the depart-
40 ment for approval;
41 [3.] C. implement and adhere to the municipal public health services
42 plan, as approved;
43 [4.] D. submit a detailed report to the department of all expenditures
44 on services funded by this title for the immediately preceding fiscal
45 year of such municipality;
46 [5.] E. employ a person to supervise the provision of public health
47 services in accordance with the provisions of section six hundred four
48 of this chapter; and
49 [6.] F. appropriate or otherwise make funds available to finance a
50 prescribed share of the cost of public health services.
51 2. A SCHOOL DISTRICT WHICH IS EXCEPTED FROM THE PROVISIONS OF SUBDIVI-
52 SION ONE OF SECTION NINE HUNDRED ONE OF THE EDUCATION LAW SHALL ALSO BE
53 ELIGIBLE FOR STATE AID FUNDING WHICH IS OR MAY BECOME AVAILABLE TO MUNI-
54 CIPALITIES UNDER THIS TITLE FOR THE SAME OR SIMILAR SERVICES, AS
55 PROVIDED FOR BY THE PROVISIONS OF SUBDIVISION TWENTY-NINE OF SECTION
56 TWENTY-FIVE HUNDRED FIFTY-FOUR OF THE EDUCATION LAW. THE PROVISIONS OF
A. 764 5
1 THIS ARTICLE REGULATING THE DEVELOPMENT, APPROVAL, IMPLEMENTATION, AND
2 FEE ASSESSMENT OF MUNICIPAL PUBLIC HEALTH PLANS SHALL NOT APPLY TO
3 SCHOOL DISTRICTS, WHICH SHALL SUBMIT APPLICATIONS IN ACCORDANCE WITH
4 SUCH PROCEDURES AS MAY BE PROMULGATED BY THE COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATION.
5 S 7. This act shall take effect immediately and shall apply to all
6 contracts entered into on or after such effective date; provided, howev-
7 er, that for purposes of a subsidy or reimbursement authorized by
8 section two of this act, a school district in which county funding or
9 staffing was not made available for the 2004-2005 school year, such
10 school district shall be entitled to receive such reimbursement or
11 subsidy for any health service rendered by the school district on or
12 after (i) July 1, 2004, or (ii) the first day of the first school
13 district fiscal year in which the county did not fund or staff such
14 school district, whichever is earlier.
